Joint Vehicular Localization and Reflective Mapping Based on Team Channel-SLAM

TL;DR

This paper introduces TCSE, a novel method that jointly localizes vehicles and maps reflecting surfaces using Team Channel-SLAM, significantly improving high-resolution vehicle positioning by exploiting shared radio propagation paths.

Contribution

The paper presents the first integration of joint localization and reflective surface mapping within a mobile networking framework using radio data, enhancing vehicle tracking accuracy.

Findings

TCSE achieves high-resolution vehicle localization.

Joint mapping of reflecting surfaces improves accuracy.

Provides a complete picture of radio path trajectories.

Abstract

This paper addresses high-resolution vehicle positioning and tracking. In recent work, it was shown that a fleet of independent but neighboring vehicles can cooperate for the task of localization by capitalizing on the existence of common surrounding reflectors, using the concept of Team Channel-SLAM. This approach exploits an initial (e.g. GPS-based) vehicle position information and allows subsequent tracking of vehicles by exploiting the shared nature of virtual transmitters associated to the reflecting surfaces. In this paper, we show that the localization can be greatly enhanced by joint sensing and mapping of reflecting surfaces. To this end, we propose a combined approach coined Team Channel-SLAM Evolution (TCSE) which exploits the intertwined relation between (i) the position of virtual transmitters, (ii) the shape of reflecting surfaces, and (iii) the paths described by the radio propagation rays, in order to achieve high-resolution vehicle localization. Overall, TCSE yields a complete picture of the trajectories followed by dominant paths together with a mapping of reflecting surfaces. While joint localization and mapping is a well researched topic within robotics using inputs such as radar and vision, this paper is first to demonstrate such an approach within mobile networking framework based on radio data.